1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to print job processing method and apparatus, and more particularly, to print job processing method and apparatus for a print shop employing multiple printers.
2. Description of Related Art
In an environment that processes a large number of print jobs with multiple printers, there has been a need to manage print jobs efficiently in an organized fashion. Examples of such an environment are professional print shops and print/copy departments at large organizations, where a variety of print requests, such as large-volume duplication and large document printing, needs to be processed and completed by utilizing multiple printers within a short turn-around time. These environments are collectively referred to as “print shops” in this application. Typically, each printing job specifies a source file that electrically contains a document to be printed, the size, color and the type of the paper on which the document should be printed, the printing resolution, duplex or single-side printing, and certain finishing conditions, such as book, staple, collate printing, etc., depending on a print job requester's needs. In order to process a large volume of print jobs that each differ in terms of these job parameters, a print shop utilizes multiple commercial grade printers. Each of these printers has limitations on available printer settings, such as the paper size, the paper type, resolution settings, etc. In addition, the print shop employs various finishing devices, such as collators, staplers, hole punchers, folding machines, binding machines, etc.
A print shop management system is typically implemented on a print shop management apparatus such as a computer connected to the printers to manage the printers and finishing devices. The print shop management system submits (i.e. assign) each print job to one or more printing devices and finishing devices to produce the print job. The job submission may be done automatically by the print shop management system, semi-automatically with certain amount of operator intervention, or manually where decisions of how to submit the print job to appropriate printers or finishing devices are made by an operator. Sometimes, multiple printers are grouped together for purposes of assigning a print job, and are referred to as clustering of printers. When a print job is assigned to a cluster, the print job is broken down into series of sub-jobs which are sent to the individual printers in the cluster. The print shop management system then waits for all the printers in the cluster to finish the sub-jobs before a job is considered completed.
In some print shop management systems, when a printer encounters an error condition and becomes non-functional before it finishes printing an assigned print job, the print shop management system automatically reassigns the unfinished print job to one or more printers which are still functional and are in a completed (idle) state.